Workshop identifies 4 agent skill shortages

What’s the biggest skill-based issue affecting your contact centre right now?

ISV Software recently led a workshop working with members of the South West Contact Centre Forum (the SWCCF). This was a question asked to the contact centre participants.

While every contact centre leader agreed there are skill sets that could be improved, there was no one overriding area for improvement. Asked to pick just 1 skill, the answers were broad, ranging from topics like hard skills (listening and keying) through to agent confidence and questioning skills.

Here are the 4 most identified skill areas and suggested ways to improve agent performance.

1. Product knowledge

The ability of agents to learn, retain and disseminate information about products or services is a sticking point. If this knowledge isn’t polished enough it can be detrimental to the customer experience.

Solution

Motability shared details about their online agent ‘bible’. This allows agents to search, quickly and easily, 24/7 for frequently asked questions and answers. The company also have a Star Line where less experienced agents can directly contact star performers for their advice.

2. Up-selling

Persuasion techniques and the ability to sell additional or bolt-on products was suggested by more than one contact centre.

Solution

Insurance giant Allianz shared that their Allianz Academy had introduced a new learning strategy for contact centre agents. The training programme now includes 4 modules on sales techniques. Agents can work through these at their own pace, building in the new techniques as they feel comfortable.

3. Complaint handling

This skill and its importance naturally varies depending on the nature of your contact centre, how regulated your industry is and how emotive your product or service is. Workshop participants from insurance contact centres, for example, require more stringent complaints procedures which are also monitored by the FSA.

Solution

By moving away from using rigid written templates for complaint correspondence, one contact centre reported a reduction in the volume of repeat complaints and the average length of time the complaint remained open.

4. Going the extra mile

Recruiting correctly from the outset is crucial to delivering a great customer experience. Customers today expect more.

Solution

Building agent motivation through incentives (like those offered by Red Letter Days) or in-house awards was recommended. Source for Business (part of South West Water) use screen and audio recording equipment to monitor customer service. Now they can reward quality service as well as more easily measured KPIs like number of calls or volume of sales.

Ultimately, we are asking so much of front-line staff. They need to be multi-skilled, switched on and able to think on their feet. The workshop highlighted that there is no one skill that needs boosting over any other areas; it’s a process of ongoing development. That said, there are plenty of living, breathing examples of how to improve agent skill and boost the customer experience.